Cotton Continues To Trail in Arkansas

For most of this year, the Senate race in Arkansas between incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor and GOP Rep. Tom Cotton has been neck and neck. But three polls since April 1 have shown Mr. Pryor with a double-digit lead.

The report notes that Pryor is managing to win the support of a third of the voters that disapprove of Obama, so he isn’t weighed down as much by Obama’s unpopularity in the state as Republicans assumed he would be. Cotton has run a shaky campaign, and in the last poll his unfavorability is slightly higher than his favorability. Dana Milbank notes that Cotton has been stressing his military service in his campaign ads, but this doesn’t seem to have helped him very much. It cannot help Cotton that he seems to be identified with Washington and with Congress specifically, and his hawkish foreign policy views are bound to make him less appealing at a time when most Americans are rejecting interventionist arguments.

Cotton was touted as one of the best of the GOP’s Senate recruits this cycle, and Pryor was considered to be extremely vulnerable. If Republicans can’t pick up a Senate seat in a midterm election year in a state where Obama is overwhelmingly disliked, it seems unlikely that they will gain control of the Senate. It also suggests that the party is struggling even in parts of the country in which it ought to be thriving, and it should serve as a warning that even relatively strong candidates aren’t able to compete when they are promoting deeply unpopular policies.

“Cotton was touted as one of the best of the GOP’s Senate recruits this cycle, and Pryor was considered to be extremely vulnerable. ”

The neocons sabotage GOP chances by offering up yet another loser. Cotton is a Graham style interventionist, who penned pro-surge pieces for the Weekly Standard bank in the day. He even egged on Obama to bomb Syria. I’d just as soon vote for Pryor than a “conservative” like Cotton.

Military service is a time honored step along the way to elected office. I have nothing against that, goodness knows a lot of recent veterans paid a price to get that particular box checked. And we could stand a few more policy makers who understand what combat actually costs. But military service works best on your resume as a public figure if it is referenced on occasion, but generally understated (by you at least.) Being anti-elitists at heart, we don’t like it when people tout their honors. Good politicians go for modesty, calculated or otherwise.

It doesn’t help your case when your foreign policy is aggressive on top of this.

It also suggests that the party is struggling even in parts of the country in which it ought to be thriving, and it should serve as a warning that even relatively strong candidates aren’t able to compete when they are promoting deeply unpopular policies.

Wait, what? Why “ought” the party “be thriving” in a part of the country if it is promoting deeply unpopular policies there? I kind of get the rational basis for this – for most conservatives, politics is not about policy at all – but it’s an insane logic. If a party is promoting unpopular policies, then there ought to be no basis for expecting that party to thrive.

“Cotton was touted as one of the best of the GOP’s Senate recruits this cycle, and Pryor was considered to be extremely vulnerable. If Republicans can’t pick up a Senate seat in a midterm election year in a state where Obama is overwhelmingly disliked, it seems unlikely that they will gain control of the Senate.”

As you note, supporting interventions that one cannot justify to voters may be more unlikable than the executive.

Mark Pryor has been involved in Arkansas’ politics since 1991, first as a delegate to the lower house of their state legislature and later as the attorney general in 1998. He has held his U.S. Senate seat since 2001. I’m sure it never hurt Pryor that his father, David, was himself a governor and U.S. senator for Arkansas, but you can’t deny that Mark has invested a substantial part of his life in the politics of Arkansas. People know his name.

Meanwhile, Tom Cotton is certainly an Impressive Young Man, but he has lived away from the state for most of his adult life. He had never held office in Arkansas before January 3 of last year, when he was sworn in as the representative of its 4th Congressional District. It’s nice to have attended Harvard twice and commanded an infantry platoon, but unless your electorate votes Republican no matter what, those things won’t get you past someone who’s spent 20+ years in service to constituents in that state.

The Tea Party loves this kind of candidate – tough-talking young men proud of not “being career politicians” (i.e., knowing how any of the machinery of government works), with copious out-of-state donations to compensate for their failure to generate support networks in their districts or states. If the out-of-state money had lined up behind someone who had come up through the ranks of Arkansas state politics, they might have had a chance.

Arkansas is the rare Red State that accepted obamacare funding to expand Medicare assistance. Cotton is of the party that would repeal Obamacare. most polling shows that Medicare expansion is popular. Whatever one thinks of Obamacare running to repeal a benefit that is broadly popular isnt a clear route to electoral success.

Last thing we need right now is a GOP-controlled Senate. The GOP will grind Congress into further dysfunction, wasting time on things like Keystone and Benghazi when we have more pressing matters like looming deflation and actually bothering to confirm presidential appointments instead of randomly filbustering everyone and everything as the GOP were doing.

Pryor voted for the illegal alien amnesty — after opposing it in the past. He needs to go, end of story. If Cotton goes neocon on immigration (AFAIK he opposes amnesty at this time) he can be tossed out at the next election.

And we could stand a few more policy makers who understand what combat actually costs

I’d be happy if it were the case that unreflectively hawkish foreign policy views were dragging candidates down, but very few voters prioritize foreign policy. I’d want to sift through the polling data a bit more before drawing the conclusion that that’s what’s happening here.

“There are also reports of undersampling Republican voters and Likely voters.”

For those unfamiliar with this, pollsters assume from experience that party identification is fluid, and don’t worry about it. The Unskewed Polls guy got hung up on this (along with general dishonesty). Also, pollsters worry about likely voters only later on, when they have a better chance of ID-ing them.

Once you get out of the Northeast, people prefer their representatives to have spent some years at one of the local universities (Go Hogs in this case). Under grad and grad work at the Ivies is looked upon with suspicion. Yes, I know you can find exceptions but that’s a good rule of thumb.

“Arkansas is the rare Red State that accepted obamacare funding to expand Medicare assistance. Cotton is of the party that would repeal Obamacare. Most polling shows that Medicare expansion is popular. Whatever one thinks of Obamacare running to repeal a benefit that is broadly popular isn’t a clear route to electoral success.”

Long standing free medical clinic shuts down due to efficacy of Obamacare. The exact quote of the person who ran the Christian mission related free service was:

“Because people are qualifying for insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, our free medical clinic will not be needed anymore…We’ve gone from seeing around 300 people a month on a regular basis, but as people were enrolling in Obamacare, the numbers we were seeing have dropped. We were down to 80 people that came through the medical clinic in February, all the way down to three people at the medical clinic in March. Our services won’t be needed anymore, and this will conclude our mission…This complete dropoff of numbers of people coming to the clinic is a result of all those who have successfully enrolled in an insurance policy now…”

And notice from the link that the clinic was considered very well run, and that its discontinuation is being reported on a conservative news site that had a very favorable view of the clinic.

But, no matter how well run, no matter how much the dignity and privacy of the patients was regarded by it, a clinic operating once a month is just not as good as, and no substitute for, having real health insurance.

And polling data does show that people in Arkansas like the decision to take the expanded Medicaid funding, just as long as the word “Obamacare” is not used. A strong plurality, nearly a majority, in fact, supports the program per se, only a small plurality opposes the program if the word “Obamacare” is used in describing it, while a strong majority claims to oppose “Obamacare” tout court.

Wait, what? Why “ought” the party “be thriving” in a part of the country if it is promoting deeply unpopular policies there? I kind of get the rational basis for this – for most conservatives, politics is not about policy at all – but it’s an insane logic. If a party is promoting unpopular policies, then there ought to be no basis for expecting that party to thrive.

A generic Republican crushes a generic Democrat in this race. As unappealing as the GOP currently is, Obama and Harry Reid are certainly much more unpopular in Arkansas.

So maybe a better way to express the point is that Cotton appears to be a very weak candidate (a Pryor a strong one). And Cotton’s weakness is likely the result of failure to take positions that resonate with ordinary voters — as well as his ludicrous hyper-enthusiasm for military intervention overseas a la McCain and Graham, which scares the pants off normal people.

“In 2010, for instance, polls of likely voters are about 4 points more favorable to the Republican candidate, on average, than those of registered voters, perhaps reflecting enthusiasm among Republican voters. And surveys conducted among likely voters are about 7 points more favorable to the Republican than those conducted among all adults, whether registered to vote or not.”